


Anchor Ring

by primeideal



Category: Chess (Board Game)
Genre: Chess Variants, Gen, Temporary character "death", Topology Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:13:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21784255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/primeideal/pseuds/primeideal
Summary: The center pawn is loyal to her deities, win or lose. She wishes they'd stick to the normal rules, though.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 15
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Anchor Ring

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ruis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruis/gifts).



I've never understood why the bishops act like they're closer to the gods than the rest of us. I mean, the kings are taller, their crown stands closer to the heavens than even those ridiculous bishop hats!

But the gods' true favorites are us center pawns. We are the ones they reach for first, that they propel forward into the heart of the board. They do not see us as mere soldiers, but recognize what we can become together, when we stand in formation defending each other. And they touch us time and again, until perhaps we transform into something new.

There is a cost to this glory, of course. We are also the first ones they sacrifice. But we are not destroyed, only set apart until the next skirmish, so I welcome this fate.

Again the goddess reached for me, caressed me, and set me down. At last, I had achieved my destiny, to be crowned a queen. Or perhaps this would be one of the quaint occasions when I needed to take on a knight's duties. I knelt eagerly, ready to rise in a new shape.

Nothing happened.

I waited as the goddess' hand faded from view. I looked around for the enemy king, but he'd fled long before. Or had he? I struggled to remember what had passed before, but there was none of that crisp certainty of a notated game, only the disturbing, dreamlike sensation that I'd surely come from somewhere...

"Daphne?" My own king's voice interrupted my thoughts.

"Your highness!" I stammered. "Where are you?"

"Don't, ah, make any fast moves. Just try to squint forward."

"Forward? Over the edge?" It's nothing forbidden, of course--powerful pieces loom there all the time--but it's not something for the eyes of lowly pawns. Shouldn't something have happened?

"Uh...in that direction. Yes."

Carefully, I rose to my full height, which wasn't saying much, and peered beyond. Where there should have been the realm of the gods, the heavens beyond the board, instead there was--the back rank. _Our_ back rank. Home.

"Is this some kind of metaphor?" I groused. "You reach the end of the board to find that nothing ever changes? Because if so, I want out."

"No, no," the king rushed to assure me. "We're in a puzzle."

"A puzzle?"

"You know how we sometimes have cylinder variants? Where the extreme files are joined together?"

"We what?"

"Never mind, you're a center pawn, you wouldn't see these things."

"I wouldn't see these things because you send me to die ten moves in," I point out. "Or the gods do, whatever."

"Well, sometimes we have to play fairy variants where the a and h files connect. The black rook still has a suit pending, she tries to nap and say she was busy going 'around the long way.' We all know better."

"I see," I said, "but I still don't know what that has to do with me."

"Apparently the deities of this puzzle are into bizarre forms of topology. Which is why our home rank is now glued to the enemy's where you so bravely advanced."

"But that's not even possible," I noted. "I mean, all the pieces would start next to each other, the kings would be illegal twice over, how would the rooks even...There's no way."

"We are puzzle-troops, Daphne. We did not come from home, not this time."

"But why change the board? Couldn't we just have a nice grasshopper or something? I liked the grasshoppers."

"You should be lucky they didn't go with the Mobius board. That'd have you convert or get twisted around somehow if you went over the edge, the knights almost vomited."

"They deserve it," I pointed out, "after making us step around their horse dung. Talk about compulsory moves."

* * *

It was a young god who grasped me, his fingers sleek and powerful. He carried me forward, set me down, and I was alone.

I was used to breaking new ground, of course, but always with the shadows of my enemies before me and my allies behind. Here, the world was barren, as if I'd been transported to an alien planet.

And then, after a spell, my nemesis appeared--Dani, standing across from me and scowling.

"What's going on?" I asked. "Do they expect us to populate this board? Because, uh, if your team works like ours, we're both women, right? Like, you need to be able to become a queen--"

"No, no. It's just an Alice battle."

"What?"

"When we move, the gods transport us between boards. So next time you move--which, ah, won't be for a while, I assume--you'll go back to the homeboard."

"What's the point of that?"

"They're gods." Dani shrugged fatalistically. "Why should we have a say?"

"Well, it's just kind of...wasteful, isn't it? I mean, if there's twice as much territory, can't your crowd come over here and we stay where we're from? Each have our own kingdom?"

"Don't tell me you'd really be satisfied with that."

"It might be nice," I said. "The larger pieces could spread out, have their own space."

"And then you'd try to promote, and you'd all get too big for your britches, and then where would you be."

"On the homeboard," I replied, not wanting to admit she had a point.

"Ahoy!" bellowed one of our knights. "I say, capital day for a sortie, innit? Just a hop skip and a jump from--"

"Ignore him," I muttered.

"Trust me," said Dani. "I always do."

* * *

I barely had time to fathom the god who shoved me forward. At first I thought nothing of his haste; they know the openings almost as well as we do. A barrage of enemy troops sprung forward to meet our army, and we stood poised to defend our allies, every threat met by an interlocking guard.

Two knights stared each other down, in the cross-eyed way that they glare at their foes. But the enemy deity did not initiate an exchange, instead preferring to develop their flank pawns.

And then I was in the middle of a fray, striking down an enemy pawn with no time for formalities. She vanished in an instant, and I barely had time to clam the square as my own. The enemy forces were not foolish enough to have thrown her away without a plan.

I braced for the void, for the box where those great and small awaited rebirth. Another enemy pawn approached, and I was swept aside--

But I did not fade, not completely. I had been set on a gray plain, and I could make out the silhouettes of others around me. Far beyond us I heard the clatter of war, the noise of struggling pawns and galloping knights and ominous clocks. The battle still raged, so why did I find no rest?

For a battle in the distance, it was quite loud. Just as I wondered how that could be, I felt another deity claim me, and no sooner had she reached for me than I was thrust into another fray. A battle in full swing, with formations of pawns already deployed to protect each other. To protect _me_ ; I was at the front of the line, as if I'd advanced four ranks without ever being in danger.

"What's going on?" I asked, as a knight I'd arrived just in time to bother fled from my reach. Still the clocks thundered. And then an enemy bishop loomed over me as if he had fallen from the sky, which of course he had. "What are you doing? You cheat!"

He gave a low laugh. "No more than you, little one."

I squinted at his robes, his pretentious staff. "Wait a minute. Didn't you die? Our knights killed you!"

"Didn't you?"

"Well, that's--" The goddess jerked me forward before I could point out that it was different. Forward, where a stony rook from the enemy lay in wait.

This time, when I was captured, I was ready. In a brief moment, I saw the war as deities did, from above. There was not one battle, but two! The defeated from one battlefield were merely reborn in another, betraying not the colors they wore but the deities they came to serve.

Before I could rejoin the fray for a third time and come to terms with where my loyalties lay, one of the kings had been overthrown. I was left as a bystander, a casualty with no flag.

For a moment I wondered if we would merely return to the box again, but I felt the deities gather us and arrange us for another war, as if the first had ended in a treaty that all parties scoffed at. A few sacred exchanges, the shaking of mighty hands and setting of distant clocks, and we were off.

Even gods need partnerships, it seems, and even goddesses are captives of time.

**Author's Note:**

> [Cylinder chess](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cylinder_chess)   
>  [Alice chess](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_chess)   
>  [Bughouse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bughouse_chess)


End file.
